Ranjay Gulati: There is a really big company based in India called the Mahindra Group. It makes cars and tractors. It makes solar power systems. It makes parts for the defense and aerospace industries. It runs more than 100 resorts from frosty Finland to the sun-baked beaches of South India. It does IT consulting. It sells life insurance. Mahindra’s annual revenues reach $20 billion. It seems like Mahindra does a little bit of everything.

Speaker 2: Mahindra Group’s purpose, Rise.

Ranjay Gulati: Across this wide expanse of sectors, Mahindra maintains a core purpose it calls Rise. It’s a company-wide initiative adopted in 2011 to knit the diverse divisions together. At its core, Rise is about making the company more successful in delivering value to with shareholders and other stakeholders. Rise is the backbone of how Mahindra operates internally and how it guides the many philanthropic programs and commercial programs that it supports. Here’s the Mahindra group’s non-executive chairman, Anand Mahindra, describing Rise in one of the company’s videos.

Anand Mahindra: Let me explain. Because when we grew from a small two-man partnership to a multi-billion dollar group, what were we doing? We were rising through opportunity. When we adapted the tractor engine and put it on a Jeep to beat the oil crunch in the ‘70s, what were we doing? We were rising to the challenge. When we built the Scorpio at a cost nobody could believe, what were we doing? We were rising through self-belief. And when Nanhi Kali sends a girl to school or when we groom an underprivileged child for a job at the Mahindra Pride School, what are we doing? We’re rising. We’re rising through inclusivity. When we plant a million trees, what are we doing? We’re rising through sustainability. So to rise has always been a part of our DNA. That’s the whole point. The only difference is that today we’re realizing the power of it.

Ranjay Gulati: Hi, everyone. I’m Ranjay Gulati, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. And this is Deep Purpose, a podcast about courage and commitment in turbulent times. I sat down with Anand Mahindra for an online conversation about the Rise philosophy and how he established it in such a large and diverse company. Anand was quick to point out how brief the core mantra of Rise actually is.

Anand Mahindra: Think differently. So alternative thinking. Accept no limits, alternative thinking, and drive positive change. Everybody remembers that. So three things. Now, today they’re looking at Rise 2.0 and they’re trying to find, “how do we give it fresh momentum?” So there may be a re-articulation of the two or three things they want people to remember. But I know for the fact that since 2007, the thing that has affected most people, including me, is when I’m in doubt, I say, “Wait a minute. I’m here to help people rise. I’m here to challenge myself and accept no limits. I’m here to think differently. And I’m going to ultimately ensure that what I do drives positive change.” Anybody in Mahindra will remember these three. So brevity is key.

Ranjay Gulati: It’s nothing new for a business to be involved in the communities it serves, but Anand argues that having a coherent and articulated purpose like Rise is essential in the modern economy.

Anand Mahindra: And if I have to look back and reflect on how this change has occurred or how this state came to be, I think when I look back to, I believe, 2007 or 2008, that was a seminal point when the Occupy Wall Street movement took place and when it became very apparent to every corporation in the world that consumers really did not trust large companies. There was an enormous trust deficit as that, and that phrase became very popular. That trend has continued at a very rapid rate where there [are] enormous expectations from companies to be integrated with communities, to be aware, to be conscious, to be not saying to themselves that, “The only preoccupation I have is of maximizing shareholder return.” And I dare say that COVID has put that whole argument to rest. In a post-COVID world, it’s become extremely clear that all consumers are looking to corporations for being much more active and conscientious members of the community. I don’t think there’s any going back from that right now, Ranjay. Everybody is going to have to do this.

Now you can ask yourself, “So what should they be doing? Should they be commenting on every situation?” Not everyone is a media organization. You’re not a paper or a media company that has to take an editorial stance. And I would say the world is a very complicated place today. There are many, many opinions. It’s a multi-polar world that have enormous views, different views from different countries and different ethnicities. But when it comes to issues where there is a very clear black and white distinction, where there is good and bad which is obvious, or as we see today, the difference, stark difference between good and evil, I do believe companies have to come out and make clear what their position is.

Ranjay Gulati: What do you have to say to people, critics of this argument, who say, “No. A business leader’s job is to focus on shareholder value and all this social reallocation is the job of elected government officials, that business should not intrude in trying to redistribute resources”? How does one reconcile that? And how does one even sell that to shareholders and saying, “We’re not going to have the kind of returns you expected but because we’re going to be doing these other things that really we believe are important for society.”

Anand Mahindra: I have perhaps a very simplistic view of it. When you define the trade-off in that manner, that we have to tell consumers that, “You’re not going to get the returns that you expected,” we have to ask ourselves over what timeframe are you making that judgment? My argument would be very simple. I would tell shareholders that unless we show that we are clear in our outlook, in our conscience and in our sense of purpose when it comes to very stark issues of good and bad, as I said, what is good and bad for the world or for your community right next to you, if we don’t take a stand, consumers are going to vote with their wallets and move away from you. So your returns are arguably going to come down.

So in a funny way, Ranjay, I think what we have to tell shareholders is that what we’re doing in the long run is in fact the best remedy or the best solution for maximizing shareholder returns. It’s a question over what timeframe. You may take an immediate hit because of a certain decision as some companies are doing today, but what you have to convince shareholders is that in the long run, you are going to get consumers voting in your favor with their wallets.

Ranjay Gulati: Yeah. Now, Anand, just to build on that idea a little bit, you saw Spotify having a big kind of controversy in the US, but the point was it wasn’t the customers who were rebelling. It was employees. It was employees saying, “Unacceptable.”

Anand Mahindra: No. Absolutely right. And in a sense that word stakeholder comes up, because it’s equally important to make sure that your associates in your company have a commitment to your company, give off their best, outperform, excel. When will they do that? Why will they do that? And I think that topic in fact is going to be one of the central pivots of our conversation today. But the question is you also will not maximize shareholder return if the associates in your company, your colleagues, are not aligned. If they are not aligned to your aspiration, if they are not coming into work every day because they believe in your purpose, then again, over time, you are not going to deliver superior financial returns.

Ranjay Gulati: The effects of the COVID pandemic on companies worldwide has been unprecedented. It has reshaped how employees view their jobs and how they do their work and it’s been an incredible challenge to business leaders. They’ve confronted everything from global recession to supply chain calamities to worker shortages to rapidly changing consumer demands. I asked Anand Mahindra how COVID reshaped him as a leader and a human being.

Anand Mahindra: It’s affected everyone deeply. I don’t believe there’s anyone in any country. Very few countries have escaped COVID completely. So I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t had a certain emotional casualty, I would call, it in their lives. First let me talk about my own company. I remember that when it started out and I issued a call for our people to try and answer the needs of the day, which at that point in time were ventilators, and I remember in four days, I literally mean in four days, our engineers who were in the plant and the plant had stopped making vehicles, but they in four days just camped out at the factory and turned out a rudimentary prototype of a ventilator, which we were willing to offer to the medical institution. I knew what our people were capable of. It’s not that I had any doubts, but I was stunned by how a common cause, the right cause, can make people do extraordinary things, ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

That was the first incredible lesson I learned, but the second thing and the far more emotional thing for me in India, how that affected me, was when particularly in the city of Mumbai, but in every metro in India, we saw after the lockdown was declared by Prime Minister Modi, we saw migrant workers leave cities. We saw them marching, sometimes barefoot, getting back to their villages. What it brought back to me was how remarkably interdependent we are. You can talk about it when you talk about global supply chains, but when you see people migrating and your entire quality of life evaporating in front of your eyes, you then realize that people who you took for granted, people at the bottom of the pyramid, how important they were to you and how they created a quality of life for the entire society, that came home to me very hard. So those, Ranjay, I would say are the two very big lessons I learned.

Ranjay Gulati: Anand says that Mahindra takes seriously the need for employees to rise within themselves. Having endured the COVID pandemic, he says it’s even more vital that each worker sees their personal life mission in harmony with the employer’s.

Anand Mahindra: What was this notorious phrase all the time? Work-life balance. Look at that phrase, how pernicious it is, because hidden in that phrase is a presumption that the two are contrary. That’s why you need a balance. If two are in different elements of the [inaudible 00:11:39] scale, they need a balance. And it perpetuated that dichotomy. What I’m saying is that there cannot be a dichotomy. That dichotomy is the source of angst, the source of tension and stress in your life. When the two are different, you’re constantly trying to balance them. Think of how powerful one’s life would be if your work was fully integrated with your purpose, if somehow it helped you answer that question. Otherwise, there was always, “My work does this and my private life allows me to become spiritual or to go on a journey to hike around the world, to be of service to people.”

But what if you worked in a company where every day you went into work and you were of help to people, your work transformed lives, your work helped people rise? Let me give you an example. My first executive assistant some many years ago, decade ago or so, was from HBS. And when he finished his four-year stint with my office as an executive assistant, he’s still with our group and he’s gone into helping create a new company called Mahindra Rural Housing Finance. Now here’s a Harvard Business School guy. He could have gone to a merchant bank. He could have gone to a private equity player. He could have tried some other startup. He stuck with us because every day when I talk to him, he feels fulfilled. He goes out into the boondocks. He helps people repair their homes. He gives them loans for building very modest houses. He sees the smiles on their faces when the roof goes on to the top and is over their heads. And he said, “That’s what makes me happy every day.”

And I’ve learned a lot from Shantanu because I said if we can give everyone meaning at work like Shantanu’s deriving, my God, we’ll be unstoppable.

Ranjay Gulati: How do you measure progress? How do you put KPIs around it? How do you make sure that we are actually tracking towards being a purpose driven organization? In your mind, was it about behaviors? Was it about actions? What does that mean exactly when you say, “Are we living Rise?”

Anand Mahindra: The way in which we measure this will probably change with every new head of HR that we get. People have different perceptions of how to measure. And I personally have a little bit of skepticism about trying to quantify things in this respect here. If you are trying to quantify it and if you have to hold up data to validate where you are on the journey, I think you’ve lost the battle. To me, Ranjay, forget the data and the quantification. The first thing is if somebody comes in and asks anyone in Mahindra, “Tell me a story about Mahindra,” and if Rise doesn’t figure in that in the majority of people, then I think we would’ve failed.

Ranjay Gulati: One thing on the right decision here, Anand, you mentioned, and I think this is a phrase that gets used a lot, which is actually confusing to some, I think is the idea that life is about win-win. You don’t have to make trade-offs. There’s the magical moment where you can achieve, do good and make money at the same time. And we all know that yes, there are win-win possibilities like microfinance, but not a lot of... Some things involve hard choices, where not everybody’s going to be happy. There are going to be moments where you have to say, “Hey, listen. I take it on the chin for the shareholders because this is good for the customer,” or vice versa. “This is something that I can’t do because it’ll really be detrimental to our shareholders.” These choices are not easy. They’re not black and white sometimes. They’re in that gray zone. How does one use Rise as a way to kind of navigate these hard choices?

Anand Mahindra: These choices become easier when you apply the right time frame to them. So first of all, let me just reiterate. That trade-off – I’ll try not to use your cliche of win-win –, but the trade-off, let me call it, is a ghost trade-off if you look at the right time frame. It’s a fictional trade-off. If you really believe in purpose and really believe in this kind of purpose, then doing the right thing is always something that’s going to help you do well and do good at the same time. There is no distinction. What will happen is a short-term trade-off. At the same time, yes, let me be real that you’re not here to only maximize the driving of positive change. Then you are a NGO (non-governmental organization). You have to recognize the difference that I’m not an NGO. If I’m going to do it without doing well at the same time while I’m doing good, then you’re not a corporation. Then you’re a social enterprise and NGO. Very clear. But if you’re a corporation, then you have to do well while you’re doing good.

Ranjay Gulati: Anand, how have you articulated for yourself your personal purpose in terms of your life purpose, your career purpose? How have you thought about it for yourself?

Anand Mahindra: People ask me, “What is the legacy you want to leave behind in the company when you work?” I leave it to you. You can try and sort of sniff out what the links might be to a personal sense of purpose. But I’ve had a very consistent answer to that over the years. When people ask me that, “What do you want to leave behind?” And I say, “Look. If people say that their time at Mahindra, while they were here, they were the best that they could be, that they’d really reached their full potential or exploited their potential, if they say that they were the best they could be during their years at Mahindra, I think I will have succeeded.” And that’s my constant preoccupation, because I think everything else follows from that. If you have a team of people doing the best that they can, you are going to succeed one way or the other.

Ranjay Gulati: One of the aims of the Mahindra Group’s Rise is raising the status and life prospects of girls in India. Historically, India has been a deeply patriarchal society and while the place of girls and women has improved dramatically in recent decades, discrimination against them remains deeply rooted. Mahindra supports several programs to combat this problem. It has helped pay for the education of nearly half a million economically disadvantaged girls. It supports National Girl Day. And there’s the Proud Father for Daughters campaign where professional photographers volunteered to make portraits of dads and daughters. Here’s Mahindra’s Sheetal Mehta in a company video.

Speaker 4: The main message we wanted to send through Proud Fathers for Daughters was that daughters are as important as your sons and that’s the way they should be perceived.

Ranjay Gulati: Anand Mahindra has been a driving force behind this and the other Mahindra initiatives. They’re at the heart of his company’s deep purpose. I wanted to ask you about another word - we’ve talked about purpose a lot -, which is “courage.” What does the word “courage” mean to you? And can you tell us about some courageous leaders in history or otherwise that you have encountered that inspire you to think about this idea even?

Anand Mahindra: Well, it’s a very, very difficult question to answer because it brings to mind so many of the more common notions of courage. When you think of bravery, for example, somebody jumping into the ocean to save someone from drowning – that’s courage. There are quieter forms of courage. Moral courage. And they have to do with coming back to our topic about purpose. If you believe in something very strongly, and you have a transcending sense of purpose – individual or your company’s purpose[, which are] ideally the same or related and symbiotic –, then frankly, you don’t ever lack courage. If you have that purpose and you’re always aligned to it, they help you make choices every day. What somebody else might see as courageous, to you, it was instinctive and reflective. So to me, if I had to relate your question to the topic of today: if you have true purpose, then courage is of consort. You don’t have to work at being courageous or being brave.

And coming to your other question about leaders. Well, it’s interesting. We all say Indians are mamas’ boys, and I’ve constantly talked about my mother being my inspiration, but she was the most courageous person I knew and I got to encounter from a very early age. She came from a very modest family background, a large family. She was a tomboy. She taught herself English. She taught herself how to ride a cycle. She first became a teacher, then she ran off and joined Bollywood for a little while, then left that, became a golfer, became a writer. She just challenged herself constantly. And it was courage in action. So I learned that courage from her. One of the things she told me was, “Don’t ever idolize any one person. Learn from everybody. If you start making one model of a person that, ‘That’s my role model,’ you will be restricted and it will be to your detriment. Learn from everybody. Make a composite of leaders.”

So every time somebody’s asked me, “Who’s your role model? Who’s the one leader that you aspire to become like?” I say, “No.” I said, “I was told very early to make a patchwork of everybody and that that would serve me best.” So I can’t name any one person to you, but I have to admit that philosophy allows me to learn from everyone.

Ranjay Gulati: Anand, this is very insightful. One last one. Any parting words on what should leaders of the future be thinking about? We’re in a very unique time and space – a lot of technological changes, political changes –, and you see a lot of young people starting ventures in India and elsewhere. What advice do you have for young people who are starting their careers and thinking about themselves as a future leader one day?

Anand Mahindra: I’m very, very wary of dispensing advice because to be honest, even at this stage in my life where I’ve just become a non-executive chairman, I am now in a very intense phase of learning from others, particularly from young people, because they’re rewriting every lesson that we learn. They’re rewriting the rules of the game. They’re rewriting how one succeeds, one ought to succeed. They’re the ones educating us even about purpose. And the Great Resignation comes from a number of young people. So I’m not in a mode where I dispense advice. The last thing I want to be is an ATM giving advice to young people about what to do.

But one lesson I would tell them, which I tell everybody, and it’s not just the young people, that has served me well is that keep in mind that if you want to succeed, no matter what you do – you may get quick success and build a unicorn overnight, you may not, but whatever you do–, just retain your humility, just remember that you’re not the smartest person in the room. And the reason why humility is good is not because I’m saying it out of any spirituality or any desire to be a Mother Teresa. I think humility leads to curiosity. And if you don’t have curiosity about the world, about other people, you will not survive today. There’s just too much going on, too much change, too much volatility. If you stay humble and stay curious, you are eventually going to find a way of navigating through all of the turbulence around you.

Ranjay Gulati: Anand Mahindra is the non-executive chairman of the Indian conglomerate, the Mahindra Group. He spoke with me from Mumbai.

You’ve been listening to Deep Purpose, a podcast about courage and commitment in turbulent times. You can go to my website for more of my conversations with leaders in the business world navigating the 21st century business environment. You can also find out about my book titled Deep Purpose. Companies that are serious about establishing and working towards a deep purpose find that it delivers game-changing results for the workers, the shareholders, and the larger society. So visit with me at deeppurpose.net. This podcast is produced by Steven Smith with help from Lauren Modelski, Ellie Honan, Melissa Duncan, Craig McDonald and John Barth. Theme music is by Gary Meister. I’m Ranjay Gulati. Thanks for listening.